Archive for November, 2015

Recently there was a heathymemory blog update of a 2009 post on the “Relaxation Response.” The occasion of this was a review of a 25th anniversary publication for the original 1975 book. The current posts are on the publication of the “Relaxation Revolution” by Herbert Benson, MD and William Proctor JD, which was published in 2010. So please bear with me as I am coming up to date.

Dr.Benson’s finding of the relaxation response, which produced a response exactly opposite to the fight or flight response. The fight or flight response produces stress, and the relaxation response relieves this stress as indicated by the physiologic effects of reduced blood pressure, metabolism, heart and respiratory rates. The most recent research shows that the relaxation response can beneficially effect the expression of genes. There will be a special post on the research regarding gene expression. Research on the relaxation response has added a third treatment option to the standard treatments of medication and surgery.

The Benson-Henry Protocol is divided into two phases. Phase One is the Relaxation Response Trigger.
Step 1: Pick a focus word, phrase, image, or short prayer. Or focus only on your breathing during the exercise.
Step 2: Find a quiet place and sit calmly in a comfortable position.
Step 3: Close your eyes.
Step 4: Progressively relax all your muscles.
Step 5: Breathe slowly and naturally.
Step 6: Assume a passive attitude. When other thoughts intrude, simply think, “Oh, well,” and return to your focus.
Step 7: Continue with this exercise for an average of12 to 15 minutes.
Step 8: Practice this technique at least once daily.

Optional relaxation response exercises will be discussed later in this post. My personal observations can be found in my post, “Personal Observations on Meditation Techniques in General and the Relaxation Response in Particular.”

The following Important Note is included at the end of Phase One. “To ensure beneficial effects (to be described in the next healthy memory post0 Phase One should be practice daily for at least eight weeks. For the maximal genetic effect as established by practiced many years.”

Phase Two involves visualization

“Use mental imagery, such as picturing a peaceful scene in which you are free of your medical condition, to engage healing expectation, belief, and memory. This second phase will usual require an average of 8 to 10 minutes. So the total time for Phases One and Two will be 20 to 25 minutes per session.”

Other Relaxation Response Exercises are discussed. To be effective they all need to include the following three components:

A mental focusing device that will help you break the patter of everyday thoughts and concerns. The device can involve words, images, or physical actions such as breathing or footsteps.
A passive, “oh well” attitude toward distracting thoughts. If distracting thoughts, including everyday worries or concerns, take over your mind during the exercise, the physiologic effects of the relaxation response might not occur.
Sufficient time—at least 12 to 15 consecutive minutes per practice session—to allow the requisite physiologic changes to occur.

The following suggestions, which are not claimed to be exhaustive, are regarded as additional ways to generate the relaxation response.

Here is how you can measure your success in eliciting the Relaxation Response

If you feel more relaxed after you finish a Phase One Session, the technique is working.

If the symptoms you experience diminish or disappear, even momentarily, during or immediately after a session, the technique is working.

If your symptoms diminish with a week or two, the technique is working.

If you feel that the stressors in your life bother you less now than they did within you started this mind body treatment process. the technique is working.

If you feel that you are more in control of your life now than when you started, the technique is working.

If you are observing the basic guidelines for eliciting the relaxation response, you can rest assured, in light of the extensive scientific studies, that the technique is working—no matter how you might feel on a day-to-day basis”

In the recent healthymemory blog post, “A Single Shifting Mega-Organism,” Syndrome E (E stands for evil) was briefly discussed. Syndrome E was developed to describe the atrocities, mass-killings, genocides such as the holocaust and the killings by ISIS. The neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried describes these atrocities as examples of Syndrome E. He defined the following seven symptoms of Syndrome E:

Compulsive repetitive violence
Obsessive beliefs
Rapid desensitisation to violence
Flat emotional state
Separation of violence from everyday activities
Obedience to an authority
Perceiving group members as virtuous

Having decided that neuroscience has come a long way since his original paper in 1997 (Syndrome E in The Lancet, Volume 150, No. 9094, p1845-1847) Fried organized a conference in Paris earlier this year to revisit the concept. Highlights of this conference were published in the New Scientist, November 14-20, 2015 in a feature by Laura Spinney.

Fried’s theory starts with the assumption that people normally have an aversion to harming others. If this is correct, the higher brain overrides this instinct in people with Syndrome E. So how might this occur.

The lateral regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) are sensitive to rules from the newer parts of the brain. The medial region of the PFC receives information from the limbic system, a primitive part of the brain that processes emotional states and is sensitive to our innate to preferences. An experiment using brain scanning was designed to put these two parts of the brain in conflict. Both these parts of the PFC were observed to light up. People followed the rule but still considered their personal preference showing that activity in the lateral PFC overrode the personal preference. The idea here is in the normal brain the higher brain overrides signals coming from the primitive brain. However, in the pathological brain with Syndrome E, the primitive brain prevails.

Fried suggests that people experience a visceral reaction when they kill for the first time, but some become rapidly desensitized. And the primary instinct not to harm may become more easily overcome when people are “just following orders.” Unpublished research using brain scans has shown that coercion makes us feel less responsible for our actions. Although coercion can cause people to take extraordinarily actions (see the healthy memory blog post “Good vs. Evil”), there are individuals who are predisposed to violence who are just awaiting an opportunity.

Unfortunately, the question remains as to how to prevent people from joining such radicalized groups. Research in this area is just beginning and much more needs to be done (See the healthy memory blog post,”Why DARPA is studying stories”). Being a neuroscientist, it is not surprising that Fried thinks that we should use our growing neuroscientific knowledge to identify radicalization early, isolate those affected and help them change. We wish him, and hopefully many others in this effort.

What is not mentioned in this article is that it can be advantageous for one group to adopt Syndrome E to take from or to take advantage of another group. Consider North America. Syndrome E was involved in vacating Native American lands for Europeans. Moreover, up until the Civil War, blacks were enslaved and slavery was a key component of the economy of the United States. I sometimes ponder how would North America been settled by Europeans had we the moral and ethical standards of today.

If you have read the preceding four healthy memory blog posts, you should be well aware of how wondrous the brain is and how even more wonderful are the memories we have due to our access to this wondrous organ. Thanksgiving is an ideal time to express thankfulness for our memories.

The best way of expressing this thankfulness is by adopting a growth mindset and to maintain this mindset throughout our lives. To maintain a healthy memory it is important not only to use our memories, but also to grow our memories. Remember those individuals who despite having brains wracked with the defining neurofibril tangles and amyloid plaques of Alzheimer’s never exhibited any of the behavioral or cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Presumably these individuals have built a cognitive reserve as a result of growing their memories.

Mindfulness and meditation also are important for a healthy memory. They reduce stress and increase our control of our attentional resources. They also provide the basis for more effective interpersonal relations, which are also important for memory health.

These are three terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, but each has distinctive meanings. The term brain certainly has the most prestige, Someone who is known as a researcher of the brain has more prestige that someone who is known for studying the mind or memory. The study of the brain, neuroscience, is regarded as hard science, whereas the study of either the mind or memory is regarded as soft science.

The adult brain weighs about three pounds, has the consistency of firm jelly, and has a wrinkled performance (deep valleys carving a puffy landscape). There are an average of 86 billion neurons in the adult male brain. These neurons are connected by about fifty trillion synapses. Research is underway to map the brain. The complete mapping of the brain would be an enormous achievement for anatomy. But apart from anatomy, what would it tell us? If we had a detailed understanding of how the brain worked, we would have important information, but we would not understand what the brain does.

The primary accomplishment of the brain is that it provides the physiological substrate of the mind. We are aware of the conscious component of the mind, consciousness. But most of the mind lies below the level of consciousness. It is constantly working, even when we are asleep, although we remain unaware of what it is doing. It is the mind that is of primary interest. David Eagleman titled his book, “The Brain: The Story of You.” Eagleman is an neuroscientist and can title the book how he likes. I am a psychologist and I would prefer “The Mind: The Story of You.” Of course, the brain is important as it constitutes the physiological substrate for the mind.

I believe that memory is thought of by most people as a place where information is stored. Usually the complaint is that their memory is poor because they forget things. Memory is central to the mind and to cognitive processing. Remember that in the visual system there are ten times as many neural pathways going down from the brain as their are pathways proceeding up from the eyes. Memory is involved in the processing of all incoming information. This provides for the rapid processing of information, but it also leaves us vulnerable to our many biases and preconceptions.

Memory is involved in more than retrieval of information from the past. It is a device for time travel where possible futures, dangers, and opportunities can be imagined. Perception is never immediate. Incoming data is first stored in a very short term store (hundreds of milliseconds in the iconic storage of visual memory), then a selective portion of this information is processed into working memory where it becomes consciousness. Whether the information is stored so that it can be remembered is largely a function of how much and how effectively attention has been applied to the information. Once stored, there is a distinction between memory that is available in memory, and information that is accessible in memory. Information that is accessible is readily recalled. Information that cannot be recalled is likely available in memory but cannot be accessed at a particular time. The healthy memory blog post “The Myth of Cognitive Decline” explains that the slowness of recall and the apparent loss of memory is primarily due to the enormous amount of information stored in the elderly brain. There is much more to search through than in younger brains, so it is often slower and can appear to be faulty. However, often when you fail to recall an item, your non-conscious memory continues to search for it, and it might pop into your consciousness a day later or even more.

It is more accurate to say that the mind recreates rather than recall memories. Memories are not exact copies of prior experiences. Moreover the act of recall improves the likelihood that the memory will be accessible in the future. This is why when studying it is important to try to recall information rather than simply reviewing. Testing provides the basis for improving memory.

So we cannot underestimate the importance of memory, and the healthy memory blog is devoted to keeping memories healthy.

A single shifting mega-organism is how Dr. Eagleman describes our species in “The Brain.” He does this because we are a social species, and an enormous amount of brain circuitry has to do with other brains. Consequently we have a new field of research, social neuroscience. I would add that our shifting mega-organism includes not only the living, but also the dead. Through the artifacts of technology, we can can learn from those who have passed away. Information resident in technology and in our fellow human beings comes under the general rubric of transactive memory.

Throughout our lives, our brain circuitry decodes the emotions of others based on extremely subtle facial cues. Research has shown that people viewing a photo of a smile or a frown, produced short periods of electrical activity that indicated that their own facial muscles were moving, effectively mirroring the smile or frown that they were viewing.

There is a pain matrix in the brain where pain is processed. The precipitating event activates different areas of the brain operating in concert to produce the feeling of pain. When you watch someone in pain, the parts of your pain involved in the emotional experience of pain are also activated. This provides the basis for empathy. You literally feel the other person’s pain. We are able to step out of our shoes and into the shoes of another, neurally speaking. Empathy is an important skill. Having a better grasp of what someone is feeling gives a better prediction about what they’ll do next. This is true of social pain as well as physical pain. Social pain activates the same brain regions as physical paint.

If empathy worked all the time, then we would be a much more functional species. Unfortunately this single shifting mega-organism exhibits warfare between and sometimes among different parts. Outgroups are identified for violence even when those outgroups are defenseless and pose no threat. This violence has occurred throughout recorded history and likely before history was recorded. Starting in 1915 more than a million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Turks (accurately portrayed in the movie “The Cut”). The Japanese invaded China and killed hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians in 1937. Then there was the infamous German killing of many millions of Jews in the holocaust during World War 2. In 1994 the Hutus in Rwanda killed 800,000 Tutsis, many with machetes. Between 1992 and 1995 during the Yugoslavian War over 100,000 Muslims were slaughtered in violent acts known as “ethnic cleansing.” In Srebrenica over the course of ten days, 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were shot and killed after the United Nations commanders expelled them from the compound in which they had sought safety. Women were raped, men were executed, and even children were killed. Today we regularly see atrocities committed by ISIS.

Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon, has called these atrocities examples of Syndrome E (E for Evil). Syndrome E is characterized by a diminished emotional reactivity, which allows repetitive acts of violence. It includes hyperarousal, which is a feeling of elation in doing these acts. There is group contagion. Everyone is doing it, and it catches and spreads. Compartmentalization exists in which one can care about his own family yet perform violence on someone else’s family. This suggests that this is not a brain-wide change, but instead involves areas involved in emotion and empathy. So a perpetrators choices are run by the parts of the brain that underlie logic, memory, and reasoning, but not the networks that involve emotional consideration of what it is like to be someone else. According to Fried, this equates to moral disengagement. People are no longer using the emotional systems that under normal circumstances steer their social decision making.

So, now we have a name and an explanation. What is needed is a means of prevention or a cure!

I’ve written that an understanding of the brain is critical to effective citizenship and effective law making. A good example of this is the war on drugs. In one study about 36% of convicted criminals were under the influence of drugs at the time of their criminal offense. Here are the results of criminalizing drug use. A few decades ago, 38,000 Americans were in prison for drug-related offenses. Now, it is half a million. As a results there are more Americans per capita in prison, than in any other country. It is ironic to call the United States the land of the free. Moreover, this mass incarceration has not slowed the drug trade. Not only is the War on Drugs not being won, it is also extremely counterproductive.

Ir is clear that criminalization is not working, and that a medical approach is more appropriate. Dr. Eagleman is working on a potentially effective approach for treating drug addicts. It provides real-time feedback during brain imaging allowing cocaine users to view their own brain activity and learn how to regulate it. He puts an addict into a fMRI brain scanner. Pictures of crack cocaine are shown and the addict is asked to crave. This activates the particular regions of the brain that are known as the craving network. Then the addict is asked to think about the costs of using crack cocaine in terms of finances, relationships, and employment. This activates a different set of brain areas that are known as the suppression network. These two networks are always battling it out for supremacy, and whichever wins at any moment determined what the addict dos when offered crack cocaine.

The scanner can measure whether the short-term thinking of the craving network, or the long-term thinking of the impulse control network is winning. The addict is given real-time visual feedback in the form of a speedometer so she can see how the battle is going. When craving is winning, the needle is in the red zone. When the impulse is successfully suppressing, the needle moves to the blue zone. The addict can use different approaches to discover what works to tip the balance of the networks.

By practicing over and over, the addict gets better understanding what she needs to do to move the needle. Although the addict might not be consciously aware of how she is doing it, but through repeated practice she can strengthen the neural circuitry that enables her to suppress. The hope is that when she’s next offered crack she’ll have the cognitive skills to overcome her immediate cravings. . The training simply provides the cognitive skills to have more control over her choice, rather than be a slave to her impulses.

Time will allow the estimation of the effectiveness of this technique. But it does provide some insight into how research into the brain can address the problem of addiction.

The Brain is a book by David Eagleman. The subtitle is “The Story of You.” I gave the book 5 stars in my review on Amazon. I wrote, “Anyone with a brain should read this book. (Knowing) how the brain works is essential for the individual. It also provides the basis for more effective government.”

The brain is the most important organ of the body (even though Woody Allen said it was his second favorite organ). It informs us who we are. Growing the brain provides us with additional knowledge and know how. This much should be obvious. However, when I see the problems we have, many of them are due to a lack of knowledge as to how our brain works. That is what I meant by writing, “provides the basis for more effective government.

Eagleman writes, “Your brain is a relentless shapeshifter, constantly rewriting its own circuitry—and because your experiences are unique, so are the vast detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint. Eagleman explains how the brain develops and why the teen brain is set up to take risks. Moving from childhood into adolescence, the brain shows an increasing response to rewards in areas related to pleasure seeking such as the nucleus accumbens. In deems this activity is as high as in adults but activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, which is important for executive decision making, attention, and simulating future experiences, is still about the same in teens as it is in children. In fact, the prefrontal cortex, which is important for executive decisions, dos not mature until the mide-twenties, which provides adequate time for ruining our lives. The brain continues to change physically as we learn new skills and information and memories themselves change each time they are summoned. Memories are highly fallible and can be easily changed, which are facts not generally recognized by courts of law.

Eagleman includes a study of nuns who are willing to provide their brains for study after they die. The nuns are tested while they are living and then autopsies are provided after they die. They have found brains that are wracked by the defining neurofibril tangles and amyloid plaques of Alzheimer’s, but these nuns never exhibited any of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and remained mentally sharp until they died. The nuns are not unique, other autopsies on other populations have resulted in similar findings. The nuns interacted with each other, they had growth mindsets, and the meditated with prayer, presumably continuing to develop a cognitive reserve. Yet Alzheimer’s research is focused on finding drugs to destroy or inhibit the growth of these physical symptoms as well as tests to detect the early development of these symptoms. There are no drugs that can cure Alzheimer’s, and there are knowledgeable scientists who believe that there never will be such drugs (See the healthy memory blog post “The Myth of Alzheimer’s). All that drugs can do is to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s. In my view all this does is to prolong the suffering.

People need to understand that reality is an illusion. True there is a real physical world, but we learn of this world via our senses, which are used to build up mental models. Moreover, each of us has different views of this world, one that changes, or should change with experience and learning. People who fail to understand this are naive realists, and one of the reasons for the problems of the world is the existence of these naive realists. Eagleman explains how this learning takes place. He notes that the brain is like a city. When one looks at a city one sees buildings, roads, structures and so forth, but to find out where businesses are and how the city actually functions, it is due to interactions of different parts of the city. The same is true of the brain. It is a complicated structure that operates by intercommunicates among the different elements. Most of these intercommunicates are unconscious, but some raise to he level of consciousness.

It is interesting to note that the visual system has some connections that feed forward and others that feed backwards. What makes this interesting is that the ratio of connections feeding backward are ten times those of feeding forward. This provides a strong indication how much we know bears on what we actually see. Expectations weigh heavily on what we see.

Our brain is a storyteller. It serves us narratives that bear on what we believe. Ascertaining truth usually entails the critical thinking about different narratives.

We are unaware of the vast majority of the activity in our brains. It remains below our level of consciousness, so one may well ask, who is in control. A good way of thinking about this is to regard our consciousness as an executive office that makes important decisions. There are some who believe that our conscious minds are only along for the ride, but I am not one of them (see the healthy memory blog post, “Free Will”).

The healthy memory blog argues that the memory is a device for time travel and Eagleman agrees. It is a device that travels back to the past to plan for the future. This involves generating scenarios for what might happen in the future. The same parts of the brain that are involved in remembering are used in imaging alternative futures.

Eagleman writes,”Although we typically feel independent, each of our brains operates in a rich web of interactions with one another—so much that we can plausibly look at the accomplishments of our species as the deeds of a single, shifting mega-organism.” A subsequent healthy memory blog post will expound more on this topic.

The final chapter is titled “Who Will We Be?” and addresses the possibility of our transcending our biological selves. This is an interesting chapter, but we might be constrained by our limited levels of attention. We can only consciously attend to several items at once. We become skilled or fluent via many hours of practice. Can this bottleneck be transcended? This question is key to the answer to the question of whether we can transcend our biological selves.

There is a PBS series based on this book, that I strongly recommend. I recommend both reading the book at watching the series multiple times. Understanding our brains is of paramount importance.

That is American and Canadian football. Given that this is the healthy memory blog, a post on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is in order. An earlier post mentioned CTE, but not in the context of football. CTE produces a loss in memory or failures of memory to function correctly. Its prevalence has been linked to football. There is a definite link, and the strength of this link remains under investigation. The NFL has taken actions in an attempt to reduce the occurrence of CTE, and I am sure that equipment manufacturers are working to develop means of safeguarding players from CTE.

So I watch football, and I feel guilty about it. Are these men damaging their brains for my enjoyment? If I had children I would strongly discourage them from playing football.

It will be interesting to see how this issue plays out. Football is such a popular game and generates enormous revenues, so it is unlikely that it will be outlawed, at least in the short term. Rules will be formulated to minimize the dangers from hits. Protective equipment will be improved. Perhaps there will even be size limits put on players. Actually, a game consisting of smaller, faster players might be more interesting.

It will take a long time to play out. Research takes time. And the damage from CTE can take many years to manifest itself. Early in the twentieth century the public became enraged by the injuries that were being incurred in college football, and changes were made to reduce injuries. But CTE takes time to emerge, and unless it is being looked for, the link between playing football and CTE might be missed. Now extreme scrutiny will be exercised in finding that link. And it will take time to see changes in the rules and improvements in equipment are beneficial. Of course, claims will be made that they do, and it will take time and improved diagnostic techniques to see if they are having the desired effect.

Dr. Benson has been conducting research with the Dalai Lama since 1979. The Dalai Lamai is very much interested in science and engineering. If it were not for his position as His Holiness for Tibetan Monks, he says that he would have preferred to become an engineer.

Tibetan monks have taken the potential of meditation to the extreme. In one study monks dressed in nothing but small loincloths are draped in wet sheets while exposed to near-freezing temperatures. Because these monks had developed amazing physiological control over years of practicing this type of heat-producing meditation, they experienced no distress in these conditions. Within minutes the body temperatures they produced steamed and dried the wet, cold sheets.

Of course, these results were not obtained by the monks meditating for 20 minutes twice a day. Meditation for many hours over many years is needed to obtain these results. But they do demonstrate the control the mind can have over the body.

Usually a precaution is given that motivation should not be involved when meditating. That is, no goals are to be achieved. Noting this and noting the performance of these Tibetan Monks Dr. Benson developed the two-step process. First the Relaxation Response is invoked. Then, when the mind is quiet, when focusing has opened a door to your mind, visualize an outcome that is meaningful. If you want to eliminate a pain, envision yourself without the pain. If you want t improve your performance in a particular venue, imagine yourself performing well in these venues. According to Dr. Benson, “Whatever your goal, these two steps can be powerful, allowing anyone to reap the benefits of the Relaxation Response and take advantage of a quiet mind to rewire thoughts and actions in desired directions.

Personally I have difficulty in getting comfortable in a chair, much less sitting on a cushion or in some Yoga positions. I much prefer reclining, that is lying down. Although I had thought this might be the case it was only in “The Relaxation Response” that I saw the reason, and that is a tendency to fall asleep. Mental processes while sleeping differ from mental processes while sleeping. Clearly this is the case or there would be no need to meditate.

However, I would argue that unless one is very tired, it is unlikely that one would fall asleep before the needed ten to twenty minutes of meditation, and surely that pre-sleep time would be beneficial.

Frankly, if I am having difficulty sleeping or have awakened and am having difficulty getting back to sleep, I find that meditation is very useful in getting back to sleep. After all, meditation quiets the mind and it is a noisy mind that keeps us awake.

I also find that meditating while walking to be extremely useful. Particularly when one can walk in nature, one experiences the dual benefits of both nature and meditation.

Then there is ad hoc meditation. This occurs in social, work, or athletic situations when you are stressed. Try to take a brief break and engage the Relaxation Response to try to de-stress and recenter yourself. This might well save you from saying or doing something you’ll regret.

The following is from a preceding healthy memory blog post, “A Simple Technique to Spark Mindfulness:”

S – Stop. Simply pause from what you are doing.
T –Take a few slow, deep, breaths with awareness and tune in.
O – Observe and curiously notice your thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
P – Proceed with whatever you were doing with awareness and kindness.